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French is still a lingua franca in most Western and Central African countries and an official language of many, a remnant of French and Belgian colonialism. These African countries and others are members of the Francophonie. French is the official language of the Universal Postal Union, with English added as a working language in 1994. [46
French is an official language in 27 independent nations. French is also the second most geographically widespread language in the world after English, with about 60 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. [1]
Lycée Français Alphonse de Lamartine de Sofia (LFAL, in Bulgarian: 9-та френска езикова гимназия „Алфонс дьо Ламартин", ФЕГ) is a selective French language school in Sofia, established in 1961 under the name 9th French Language School Georgi Kirkov. [1]
The Francophonie or Francophone world is the whole body of people and organisations around the world who use the French language regularly for private or public purposes. The term was coined by Onésime Reclus [1] in 1880 and became important as part of the conceptual rethinking of cultures and geography in the late 20th century.
This is a list of the member states of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.These governments belong to an international organisation representing countries and regions where French is the first ("mother") or customary language, where a significant proportion of the population are francophones (French speakers) or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture.
French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.As of 2023, an estimated 350 million African people spread across 34 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, mostly as a secondary language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. [2]
The French language became an international language, the second international language alongside Latin, in the Middle Ages, "from the fourteenth century onwards".It was not by virtue of the power of the Kingdom of France: '"... until the end of the fifteenth century, the French of the chancellery spread as a political and literary language because the French court was the model of chivalric ...
Other major languages are Russian (23%), Turkish (9.1%), and Romani (4.2%) [3] (the two main varieties being Balkan Romani and Vlax Romani). There are smaller numbers of speakers of Armenian, Aromanian, Romanian, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz and Balkan Gagauz, Macedonian and English. Bulgarian Sign Language has an estimated 37,000 signers. [4]